


Reenactors, Chapter 1

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Series: Reenactors [1]
Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the outset of the engagement between the <i>Shannon</i> and <i>Chesapeake</i>, Jack and Stephen find themselves inexplicably on the deck of <i>USS Constitution</i> in Boston two hundred years in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reenactors, Chapter 1

June 1, 1813  ≈ 6:05 p.m.  
  
Stephen came on deck during the action just in time to hear a deafening percussion as a thirty-two pounder hit a spar directly over Jack’s head and exploded into a dense cloud of oak splinters, blocks, tackle and rigging.The last thing he remembered was a massive blow to his own head and the world going black for a seeming long, long time.  
  
 _ **Day 1 - 1 June**_  
 _ **I know no other way of writing to-day’s date. It is a mystery to me. I fear that Jack and I have both died and that we are actually in hell, as incoherent as this sounds, given I have no notion of diary-keeping in an inferno, though this be an**_ **infernum sine igni** _ **. I killed two men, French spies, early this morning and had no chance to go to confession and receive absolution before**_ **Shannon** _ **engaged with**_ **Chesapeake** _ **. If I died on deck, that would explain my presence here. Why God in His infinite wisdom and mercy would see fit to have me arrive with Jack at my side is a mystery. Is it a punishment for me to see his suffering and for him to see mine? Surely he would not be here with me, not being Roman Catholic. This is like no hell I have ever read of or heard of in my lifetime, however. No lakes of fire, no fire indeed. Instead, it appears that we have somehow appeared two hundred years in the future.**_  
  
 _ **Omai could not have possibly had any more of a shock being brought to cosmopolitan London by Captain Cook in 1774 than Jack and I have had today. The world is completely transformed, yet this is supposedly Boston, the city in which we have lived for the last five months. The only familiar object besides our persons is the USS**_ **Constitution** _ **, which appears much as we knew her six months ago (though Jack remembers little from being so close to death after the engagement.) It is at least familiar to him in form, though. Could God conceive of hell by sending us into a distant future for which we are completely unprepared and unsuited? It is more incoherent. Everything is different except for the sky, the sea and some living things, like trees. The buildings are mammoth Towers of Babel boxes of glass, inconceivable amounts of glass; the streets gigantic and paved with hardened molten rock of some sort. There are no horses, few animals at all, instead these strange coloured boxes on wheels, apparent carriages on wheels, self-propelled, very powerful and potentially lethal. There is light without fire or flame. We are in little pain, though both our heads ache horrendously from being hit with the spar that fell. I examined Jack and myself as far as it was possible and it appears that there is no fracture, nothing but mild concussion. I write this entry on the finest paper with some sort of shell-like writing instrument, a pen. Everything is alien, absolutely everything. I am trying hard not to despair.**_  
  
 _ **The lady at the**_ **Constitution** _ **informed us that we would each be paid $100 a day, six days a week. Jack and I both thought this sounded a princely sum, but then we found out that a very small meal could easily cost $10 each. Rent will be very high as well, over a thousand dollars a month.**_  
  
 _ **We are spending the night in an inn and it is very expensive, but we are exhausted. I cannot believe yesterday morning I was in Diana’s bed and now I shall probably never see her again.**_  
  
Stephen opened his eyes and Jack was sitting next to him on the deck. Jack was holding his hand and peering with great concern into Stephen's face. Stephen noticed immediately that the ship was not moving and there was no fire from the great guns.  
  
“Stephen, are you all right?” He heard Jack say, sounding very far away.  
  
“Where are we? What happened? Was _Shannon_ taken? Why are we not firing? Where is Diana?”  
  
“I do not know.” Jack said. “The last I remember was a thirty-two pounder hitting the maintop yard. I saw you just as the yard blew into splinters and came down on me.” He looked around. “I do not believe we are on _Shannon_. Can you sit up, Stephen?” Stephen nodded and Jack helped him up. Stephen realized his spectacles were intact and took them off and wiped them and replaced them on his face and he and Jack then looked up and around. To their uncomprehending eyes they found themselves surrounded by apparent civilians, civilians of all ages, ethnicities and both genders wearing clothes that they had never seen the like of anywhere in the world.  
  
“Jack, I fear that I must have been injured far worse than I initially believed. I am seeing very strange apparitions.”  
  
“Are you, brother?” Stephen squinted.  
  
“There appears to be a child, a girl with blond ringlets climbing on the carronade.”  
  
“Stephen, can two people spy a simultaneous apparition without it being real?”  
  
“No, of course not.”  
  
“I see her, too.” Jack said and looked up to see an African woman wearing an immaculate white dress uniform with a skirt that was just below knee length approaching them. A smile lit up her face. She had a tag high on the right breast of her jacket that was imprinted with the word “JEFFERSON” and insignia with two chevrons on her sleeve.  
  
“You two are the best reenactors ever! Oh, sorry, "interpretive guides," we do not use the “r” word on the _Constitution_ \-- what a beautiful uniform! That is the most beautiful uniform I have ever seen in my life!” She said effusively, staring at Jack, at the copious gold lace on the coat he was wearing and on his hat. “I have never seen the like. The workmanship, you just do not see the likes of that ever these days! It is gorgeous, just absolutely gorgeous, every single detail. Just the hat alone... but watch it with the fake blood, the Captain does not want that on his deck. And the saber and the pistols!” Her eyes opened wider. “My goodness, even your hair is perfect, absolutely perfect, both of you. Have you checked in below deck?”  
  
“Madam, what ship is this?” Jack asked. She laughed.  
  
“I love the accent! Love it! Sir, I am Petty Officer Second Class Jefferson and this is the _USS Constitution_ , sir, Old Ironsides, and you’d better get below deck and check in with the docent if you want to get paid for today. I didn’t know they were going to send us British prisoners. That is a fantastic idea, we have never had British prisoners before. It will be a huge, huge draw. Welcome aboard. Now please get up off the deck before the kids try to take you to the brig. What is your name?”  
  
“Captain Aubrey.” She smiled and saluted him.  
  
“Welcome aboard, Captain Aubrey. And you, Sir?”  
  
“Joan Maragall.” She took Stephen’s hand and shook it.  
  
“Welcome aboard and now you should go downstairs and get checked in.” She pointed to the companion ladder and left them.  
  
“Jack, I am afraid that I have gone quite mad.”  
  
“The same thought occurs to me, though surely there must be a reasonable explanation.” Jack looked around. “This is, indeed, the _Constitution_ , from the little I remember of actually having been aboard. We appear to be docked, the young lady said in Boston?”  
  
“Perhaps we should go below deck.” Children ran past them screaming and laughing. Jack was disgusted by the behavior of the civilians, the lack of any visible ship's complement, the excrement of the gulls on the deck.  
  
“Where is the crew? Where is the Captain? Bainbridge, is that not right, Stephen?”  
  
“Jack, something very odd has happened. That young woman in the uniform, I believe that she is in the United States Navy, which in and of itself would suggest an incomprehensible …” Stephen broke off. “I scarce have the words, Jack. Where is the _Shannon_? Where is Diana? This cannot be June 1, 1813. Have we perhaps been comatose for a very long time?”  
  
“Let us go below.” They went to the companion ladder and descended.  
  
“Ahoy, interpretive guides! Wow, what great costumes, they look very authentic. British prisoners, that is a great idea. The Foundation embraces multiple viewpoints, " said a very short, middle-aged woman, dressed in civilian attire, looking at them. “I am Mary Adams and I am chief docent here on the _Constitution_. I’ll be signing your time cards and paying you every day. Was this your first time on the _Constitutio_ n?”  
  
“No, Madam.” Jack said.  
  
“Well, we are closing for the day. If you can sign in on the sign-in sheet, I can pay you for today tomorrow. I apologize that I got here so late, I was held up all day at home and I did not realize you would be here. Here is our sign-in sheet we use in lieu of time cards, since the Foundation will actually be paying you.” She passed a clipboard to Jack and he looked down at it and saw printed upon it: **Date:** **June 1, 2013.**  
  
“Stephen.” He said and passed it to Stephen.  
  
“Dear God.”  
  
“Do you need a pen?” She gave Jack a plastic Bic ball point pen. In the column under the word **Name** , he wrote “J. Aubrey,” staring at the strange device that he wrote his name with and handed it to Stephen, who illegibly scrawled “J Maragall.” “The ship is closed to the public now, so you can go tidy up in the facilities and we shall see you tomorrow at ten a.m."  
  
“Thank you, Madam." Jack said and he bowed to her. She simpered at him and left them. Stephen was hyperventilating. Jack took his arm with his left hand.  
  
“We will go and discuss this in the breadroom.” He said very quietly and led Stephen to the breadroom which was empty and closed the door.  
  
“Jack, we appear to be having a joint hallucination, a _folie a deux_. I am afraid I have gone mad, that a spar or a block hit me and damaged my brain, or it was coupled with strain of the last thirty-six hours and my humours are now severely deranged. That paper said today is two hundred years after my last memory. I am afraid you, too, may be a hallucination. That is not your uniform." Stephen said.  
  
“I am not a hallucination, Stephen. A hallucination does not have a goddamned splitting headache and blood staining its uniform and no, this is not my uniform, it was loaned to me on _Shannon_. I had no uniform, if you recall. I had virtually nothing when I left the Asclepia to fetch you and Diana. My cousin Broke asked his officers to lend me one to put on for the engagement since I had none. It is his lieutenant’s best winter coat, breeches, silk stockings and his best hat. This situation is the damnedest thing and my arm is very sore." Jack said. “Stephen, pray be a good fellow and adjust the cingulum, if you please.”  
  
“Let me help you to get your coat off, Jack.” Stephen said, the matter at hand helping him to restore his wits somewhat. He gently took off Jack’s coat and undid the binding, examined Jack’s arm and the wound, tied it more comfortably and helped Jack to put his coat back on. Jack sat back and looked at him.  
  
“Brother, are you still feeling unwell?” Jack said, looking at him with tender solicitude.  
  
“These are the possibilities, Jack: one, I am dead and this is some sort of bizarre hell or purgatory, never described in any religious text with which I have ever been acquainted. Two, this is a coma and I am injured somewhere and living in this dream whilst bedridden. Three, I have gone completely mad and am having these hallucinations on the deck of _Shannon_ or _Chesapeake_ or possibly in Boston. Four, that this is a very realistic if completely strange dream and I am merely asleep and will awaken."  
  
“Stephen, you left out the possibility that there is a perfectly rational explanation. I have no idea what it is, but I know that I ain’t mad. Something clearly has happened in some way that we cannot understand. I am sorely disappointed to have apparently missed the engagement. What damnable luck. We was about to board her."  
  
“Jack, Diana and I were to be married. We were about to escape from America. Now we are in Boston without Diana, in America and it is two hundred years later? How is that possible? What of Diana? Where is Diana? What if Johnson was on the _Chesapeake_? I left Diana with a brace of pistols. What could possibly have happened to her, Jack? What must she think if we were suddenly spirited away and I left her there? What must she think of me, Jack?" Jack had never seen Stephen so agitated. That Diana had been under Stephen's protection and that he had apparently deserted her at the commencement of a naval engagement when she was fleeing for her life and when she had agreed to marry him that very evening -- Jack rubbed his eyes. No, this was not an irrational reaction in a man who would kill anyone in a heartbeat over any perceived slight against his honour.  
  
“I do not know, Stephen.” Jack said "Now, why is there no bread in this breadroom? I am downright clemmed.”  
  
“If this is actually real, then the ship is now over two hundred years old. I do not believe she sails. What did that sheet of paper say?”  
  
“It said, “ _USS Constitution_ , America’s Ship of State. Naval History Heritage, War of 1812 Bicentennial.”  
  
“Dear God.” Stephen said and started praying in Catalan.  
  
“Stephen, I am as real as you and I do not understand what you are saying.”  
  
“I am praying to the Holy Mother, Jack. I prayed this way in Mahón and she told me you will always come for me. I am praying for you to come to me and return me to my senses.”  
  
“Stephen, I am here.” Jack said and he squeezed Stephen's shoulder very hard with his left hand. “I am here. You are not alone. No one will hurt you. I shan't allow anyone to hurt you. You have nothing to fear. They do not appear to be hostile. We shall sort this all out.”  
  
“Jack, I want to go back to the _Shannon_. I want to go to _Shannon_ and marry Diana.” Stephen said, closing his eyes.  
  
“Stephen, we shall ascertain what has happened and then make a plan, accordingly. I promise you, I will do everything I possibly can for you to be reunited with Diana. I do not pretend to understand this. Now, what was that woman named?”  
  
“Mrs. Adams, I believe.”  
  
They left the breadroom and met Mrs. Adams, who decided that she would give them a tour before leaving, to demonstrate the types of presentations they would give in the morning. She walked with them around the ship. She was taken aback by Jack’s minute knowledge of every aspect of the ship -- the guns, the decks, the masts, the rigging and sails, the function of different areas. She told him he was more qualified for her job as Lead Docent than she was and that she would pay them cash in the morning and left them.  
  
“Is there not one scrap of food in this infernal tub?” Jack said. “My belly is as empty as Eden after the fall.”  
  
“Jack, we have no money.” Jack opened the drawer of the desk that Mrs. Adams had met them at and had pulled out the sign-in clipboard and pen. There was a black billfold lying in the desk. Jack opened it and it was full of American currency.  
  
“This is their money. Look at that.” Jack said, squinting in the dim light. “It says “Federal Reserve Note. The United States of America. Twenty Dollars. Jackson.” There are a lot of them.” Jack counted. “Upon my word, that is seven hundred dollars and there is this card with a portrait of a Mr. Ted Jackson” Jack squinted more, “ of Miami, Florida.”  
  
“Take only the money, Jack. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” Stephen said, shaking his head.  
  
“Stephen, here are maps. We are apparently in Charlestown Navy Yard. Look, it says, “You are here.”” Jack said and he laughed, because he loved any kind of map and he had never seen one with such a humourous legend.  
  
“Jack, what shall we do? Where are we going to sleep? Where shall get food?”  
  
“We shall sleep on board, of course, but perhaps not tonight. In the sleeping cabin. Let’s go see it.” Jack said and walked directly to it. “That cot is immaculate.”  
  
“There is only one. Where shall I sleep?”  
  
“With me, of course. This broadside says that the ship closes daily at 6 p.m. We must learn if the ship is guarded and how and hide in the breadroom. I am sure there’s a hiding place in it. I can think of a thousand places to hide, Stephen. Now let us go and get some food before I faint from hunger.” They went above deck and walked down the gangway and no one looked at them twice. Jack followed his nose to a metallic cart where a short man was selling sausages in bread. Jack bought them each one and an assortment of the other food on the cart as well as bottles of water, the only beverage he could identify. They walked to a bench near the corner and ate.  
  
“Hot dog.” Stephen said. “How strange. Do you think it is made of dogs?”  
  
“It said “all beef,” Stephen.” He and Stephen looked up at the same time at the sound of an engine and both of them almost dropped their food on the pavement.  
  
“My God, what was that?” Jack was speechless. “It moves so fast and there is no animal pulling it.”  
  
“What a fantastic age. I have never seen anything move that fast that was not fired out of a gun.”  
  
They walked up hill looking around and Stephen was the first to see the sign for the Bunker Hill Branch of the Boston Public Library, home of the oldest free municipal library in America.  
  
“Jack, this building is a library and apparently, anyone may enter.” Stephen said, dragging him in by the hand. Stephen stood inside staring at the thousands of books and the computers.  
  
“They have machines of moving book pages. Look at it.” he said, pointing at a computer.  
  
He and Jack walked by a bookshelf that was covered with pastel spined paperback novels and the title a spring green one caught Stephen’s eye and he picked it up, perused it and then to Jack’s great consternation, fainted dead away. Jack aroused him and was dragging him out of the library when Stephen was violently ill and vomited near the exit. Jack nearly physically carried him with his one good arm out the door and down the hill towards the ship, Stephen utterly suffused with shame. They stopped and sat on a bench, halfway down Bunker Hill.  
  
“Jack, I have gone mad. There is no other explanation.” Stephen said  
  
“The food did not agree with you.” Jack said gruffly, but not unkindly. "Stephen, if you have gone mad, so have I.” Jack said. “I do not believe that. We are in a very strange situation that we cannot apprehend, but that does not make either of us mad.”  
  
"We have been utterly cursed ever since we stepped on board that doomed _Leopard_ , Jack. One disaster after another; tis like the curse of the Atreides. Why should you and I have not been plucked off the _Shannon_ less than two hours before Diana and I were to wed?" Stephen said bitterly. Jack looked at him with sympathy. He had never seen Stephen so disturbed, frustrated and disappointed. Jack remembered his own thought a little more than a day ago, now it felt like a lifetime ago, that Diana was bad luck, that they had carried their own bad luck aboard with them in the _Shannon_ in the form of her person. He coloured remembering it. They sat in silence for twenty minutes. Finally, Stephen sighed and stood up.  
  
“Jack, shall we walk around to get our bearings?"  
  
“Certainly.” They got up off the bench and started walking up hill. Stephen looked up and stared at the skyscrapers on the horizon and looked up, up, up until his face was nearly perpendicular to the horizon.  
  
"Dear God, how is such a thing possible," he said, and started to faint. Jack caught him.  
  
"Look down, not up. Do not look up." Jack said and dragged him over to a marking on the ground and a sign. "Look, it says this is the Boston Freedom Trail." They started walking.  
  
A strange thing happened to Jack and Stephen on the Boston Freedom Trail. People came up to them and asked them questions and then gave them money. Jack answered their questions to the best of his limited ability and the tourists laughed and gave them more money. By the time that they had walked the circuit back towards the ship, Stephen and Jack had three hundred dollars more in cash. Jack bought more food from a street vendor. Stephen refused to eat anything and sat on the bench holding Jack’s pistols and saber as Jack ate, staring at their bizarre surroundings in exhaustion. His exertions in the previous twenty-four hours weighed upon him heavily.  
  
“Jack, pray let us go to an inn tonight." Stephen said and they walked around until they found the Constitution Inn near the ship, where Jack convinced the clerk that their identification had been stolen when they had shifted into their reenactor clothes. Jack struggled with the lock on the door, bewildered how a flat smooth sheet of plastic could be used open a lock. Finally, he and Stephen were in the room and Jack turned the more familiar latch closed inside.  
  
“My God this is strange.” Stephen said. “What is this lever on the wall?” He said flipping the light switch and he and Jack gasped as the lights came on.  
  
“That explains why there are no candles and no whale oil lamps.” Jack said."I wonder what the principle is."  
  
"Is the door locked?" Jack tried to open it.  
  
"Yes." They walked around the room into the bathroom." A seat of ease, a scullery and a washtub." Jack said. Stephen examined the toilet, pulled up the lever and then pushed it down.  
  
"Ingenious." He turned the taps on in the sink. "Like the Roman baths. Hot water." He leaned over the tub and turned the spigots. "Jack, I believe this is for bathing. No wonder the people are all so clean."  
  
"Shall you take a bath?" Jack said and he started disrobing.  
  
"Tis so small."  
  
"Tis no marble baptismal font." Jack said, smiling in remembrance of Stephen’s bath in Spain.  
  
Stephen undressed and he and Jack looked at themselves naked in the bathroom' s full length mirror. Each had never actually seen himself so fully or clearly in such a distortion-free mirror with such bright light.  
  
"Does my person actually look like that?" Stephen asked, not at all pleased.  
  
"Yes." Jack said. He viewed his right arm from different angles."My God, what a lot of ugly scars I have." Jack said, looking at his reflexion."I had no idea. My arm is frightful. I do not even remember many of them."  
  
“I do not find them ugly." Stephen said, with great affection. "A man with no scars is a man who has never taken a risk and never gained anything of consequence." He and Jack stared at their reflexions.” What if we are here forever?”  
  
“Here meaning Boston or 2013?”  
  
“2013.”  
  
“Then I had better pick a new goddamned profession.” Jack said.  
  
“Should you want to go home? To England?”  
  
“Stephen, I cannot even contemplate such an eventuality. Pray, let us not discuss this now. We must go back to that library to learn more. Test the water so you do not get scalded.” Stephen put his foot in the tap, adjusted it, put the stopper down and stepped in.  
  
"Tis small."  
  
"Not compared to a washtub. Is it not wider than your cot?"  
  
"It is shorter."  
  
"Stephen, what is that thing in the middle?" Stephen turned the handle and water came out of the shower. He shielded his face and turned it off, bathed quickly and pulled the stopper for Jack. "Stephen, what a fellow you are. Where did the water go? Was it not still hot?"  
  
"Faith, there seems to be plenty." He said."You may want it hotter." He tested the water coming out of the tap. "Think," Stephen said, "This morning was two hundred years ago. We might have been only two miles away from here. The Asclepia is no doubt gone, Fanchon's hotel is gone, the Herapaths are gone, all of Boston we knew for over five months is gone."  
  
“Stephen, pray do not talk this way.” Jack said, looking at the tiny bottles on the counter and opening a package of Camay. “I believe tis pink soap.” He lathered his hands. “How novel, though I shall smell like a bawdy house when I am done.”  
  
“We must buy some other clothes. We must seek to be inconspicuous.”  
  
“I agree. When in Rome... who said that, Stephen?”  
  
“St. Ambrose.” Jack finished washing, took a towel and got out of the tub.  
  
“I do not believe I have ever been so clean.” Jack said, drying himself.  
  
"Everything is so clean." Stephen said and sat on the bed. They had no night clothes and now their clothes seemed soiled compared to the bed they were to sleep in so that they preferred to be naked. Jack had discovered the closet and neatly hung their things and got in the bed. They had forgotten how to turn the lights on and off. “Jack, douse the light.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“There was something on the wall by the door.” Jack got up and felt for it and they were in the familiar darkness of night. He lay down next to Stephen.  
  
"This is not as awful as being stuck on Desolation until we died of starvation or cold or being in that damned cutter of _La Flèche_ after she caught on fire and we were dying of thirst or walking through France afraid of being captured. It seems there is no enemy. The Americans are very civil, unbelievably civil. Giving us money, not an unkind word or rude gesture, not even when you vomited in their library. Clearly, times have changed. We have been received like royalty."  
  
"Jack, I do not understand what this means. I cannot make any sense of it."  
  
"Pray try to sleep, Stephen. You are positively hipped, as am I."  
  
They both fell asleep.  
  
Jack woke up very early the next morning, disoriented. All he knew was that he was in a bed and Stephen was beside him. Light came in through a crack in the curtains and Jack got up and looked out the windows and beheld the twenty-first century. He went to the door, turned the light on and and then moved and stood next to the television. It had a red power switch that Jack touched and it turned on. Jack stood there shocked, seeing the Weather Channel. Stephen opened his eyes, not at all pleased but not surprised that they were still in the apparent future.  
  
"God and Mary be with you, Jack and what is that thing?" Jack was looking behind the flat screen and touching the back of it with his hands.  
  
"I do not know. Tis like an enchanted mirror or talking picture frame. Look, there are people, like seeing people through a window on a stage.They do not look like a painting." Jack pushed a button and the channel changed."How extraordinary." He said, changing the channels. Stephen opened the drawer and looked inside the bedside table.  
  
"Jack, there is a book that says "Holy Bible." There is a card. Here is a gazette. That must be what this card says is called a "television." “Tele” is “far” in Greek, “far away vision.” We can see into the houses of those people. Do you think they can see us?" Jack hurriedly pulled his small clothes on.  
  
"They do not react to us, whether we push this knob or move."  
  
"True. I feel nauseous seeing it, Jack," Stephen said, putting his face in the pillow. “Make them go away, if you please." Jack pressed the red button and the television turned off.  
  
"Poor old Stephen, you need some breakfast to set you up. I am sharp set myself. We have eaten practically nothing since dinner on _Shannon_. Surely people still eat breakfast. Shall we dress and reconnoitre? What time is it?"  
  
Stephen got out of bed, found his waistcoat and looked at the Breuguet he had taken from Pontet-Canet’s body two days before.  
  
"Six a.m. Perhaps you can take an observation at noon to see if it is correct."  
  
They dressed and opened the room door to make a fresh foray into the twenty-first century


End file.
